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XFL Week 4 Recap: Home Sweet Home

Professional football returns to St. Louis for the first time in three years during Week 4

By Clyde E. DawkinsPublished about a year ago 4 min read
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Hard to believe that four weeks of this XFL season have come and gone, but that is the case. Week 4 of this 10-week regular season began with the Orlando Guardians hosting the Houston Roughnecks, with the Guardians still searching for their first win of this season. They wouldn't come close. It was 20-0 Roughnecks after the first quarter! Yikes! Guardians managed to make some noise in the second quarter, but let's face facts, they were not winning this game. Roughnecks ended up winning, 44-16, maintaining their stranglehold over the league.

In any pro football league, 0-4 is potentially deadly. The Canadian Football League may be 18 games long, but even that league advises against an 0-4 start. Same with the NFL, as only one team in the NFL's 100+ year history has actually reached the playoffs after an 0-4 start. Keep in mind, those leagues have regular seasons that are nearly twice as long as both the XFL and the USFL. Both leagues have 10 week regular seasons, meaning starting 0-4 basically means it's over. A lot has to happen to stay alive.

The second half of the Saturday double-dip was a low scoring affair between the Seattle Sea Dragons and the San Antonio Brahmas. Both teams entered with one win each, but this defensive battle would go the way of the Sea Dragons, a 15-6 final. We have seen quite a few low-scoring games this season, meaning that even with the league's rules, we haven't seen a lot of offense-filled shootouts--as of yet. In any event, the Sea Dragons have won back-to-back games after an 0-2 start, and they could make a lot of noise in the final six weeks of the regular season.

1,107 days. That's how long it had been since a professional football game was played in St. Louis. When the XFL placed a team in St. Louis, it marked the return of pro football in the midwestern city for the first time since the Rams returned to Los Angeles in 2016. St. Louis had lost the NFL twice; the football Cardinals played 28 seasons (1960-1987) in St. Louis before moving to Phoenix in 1988. The NFL returned to St. Louis seven years later in 1995 when the Rams left Los Angeles and moved to that city, with the 1999 season seeing the St. Louis Rams win Super Bowl XXXIV. 2020 saw the debut of the St. Louis BattleHawks, but the incoming COVID-19 pandemic led to the league going on a long pause.

Finally, the BattleHawks played their home opener in 2023, doing so after playing their first three games of this season on the road. The turnout was wild; St. Louis had been waiting a long time to see their BattleHawks again, and they also wanted to see their team win. They would get just that; the Hawks defeated the Arlington Renegades by a score of 24-11 in front of a raucous, football-hungry crowd--a perfect ending to the team's home opener.

Week 4 ended with another "unbeaten vs winless" matchup; the DC Defenders against the Vegas Vipers. Unlike Saturday's game, the Sunday battle started off just a bit closer, with DC up 14-6 at halftime, but the reality set in and the Defenders took over the rest of the way. The Defenders defeated the Vipers, 32-18, and from the looks of it, the Roughnecks definitely have a viable foe in the form of Our Nation's Capital's XFL franchise. We won't have to wait too long to see these two teams in action: they will face each other on March 27--a Monday.

Here's how things stand after four weeks. In the North Division, the DC Defenders stand tall at 4-0, while the St. Louis BattleHawks are close behind at 3-1. The Seattle Sea Dragons improve to 2-2, and the Vegas Vipers remain winless at 0-4. In the South Division, the Houston Roughnecks are 4-0, the Arlington Renegades are 2-2, the San Antonio Brahmas dropped to 1-3, while the Orlando Guardians are 0-4. We are almost at the halfway point of this season, and things are definitely picking up.

Week 5 begins with a Thursday night battle between the Houston Roughnecks and the Seattle Sea Dragons, which is followed by a Saturday doubleheader; first off, the DC Defenders and the St. Louis BattleHawks in a pivotal North Division battle, and that's followed by a "someone's gotta win" game between the Orlando Guardians and the Vegas Vipers. The week will conclude with the San Antonio Brahmas hosting the Arlington Renegades in a Sunday night matchup.

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About the Creator

Clyde E. Dawkins

I am an avid fan of sports and wrestling, and I've been a fan of female villains since the age of eight. Also into film and TV, especially Simpsons and Family Guy.

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  • Safeera Satharabout a year ago

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